people on TV are pretty. we the viewing public see enough ugly people in our day-to-day lives, so we all like to "get away" in hour long or half hour increments where we see nothing but pretty people. pretty people being funny, pretty people solving crimes, pretty people dealing weed near mexico, etc. i challenge you to find two prettier dudes than rob lowe and john stamos, both TV veterans. and despite being a midget, hayden panettiere is just about the prettiest face on tv. sometimes TV shows have to "dress down" the pretty people so they can play average person roles (see: jenna fischer).
movies seem to allow more ugly people to slip through. well maybe not quite ugly, but definitely less appealing to the eyes. phillip seymour hoffman and paul giamatti, two of my favorite actors, come to mind.
but TV very rarely allows these eyesores to mess up its shiny visage. however, sometimes they do. in very offensive ways. sometimes, for reasons i can't understand, people who are as ugly as your average DMV patron show up on hit shows. it is my task today to share some of them with you and to ask the question, who the fuck cast these double baggers.
(1) natalie from "the facts of life" (mindy cohn) - or, the fat one from facts of life.
jesus christ, that is one unattractive chick. and the strange part is that she was cast when she was a little kid. almost exclusively, child actors and actresses are cute because really there's no acting ability yet to set them apart from the ugly ones. now, nancy mckeon (jo, on the show - 2nd from the right) was no looker either and she sported an awesome femullet in later seasons, but she was obviously the dyke character and it was ok. not to go off on too much of a facts of life tangent , but blair was a cunt, wasn't she? also there was one episode, and i'm too lazy to do the research here, but it involved some kid with an acne problem that they called "pizzaface". anyway, he bid on something to win a date with blair and all the other kids were mean to him. used to make me cry when i was a kid. fucking facts of life and their life lessons. and oh yeah, i didn't like when they brought the mentally challenged cousin jerri on either. made me uncomfortable, even as an eight year-old.
(2) joanie cunningham from "happy days" (erin moran) -
she could maybe pull off moments of not being repugnant when she was a kid, but by the time joanie loves chachi came around, she was downright shameful. like someone beat her with a sack of nickels. and have you seen her lately? i'll spare you by not posting a photo, but suffice it to say that just looking at her makes me impotent for a period of up to 24 hours. scott baio, in addition to being a good looking lad, was also the king of "battle of the network stars". i mean, he killed the obstacle course. what was he thinking in hooking up with this fucking troll? he probably could have been balls deep in pinky tuscadero since henry winkler is really gay and didn't have dibs.
i guess she should be thankful that they didn't write her out of the show for being ugly and boring, like they did to older brother chuck after the first season.
(3) jennifer from "family ties" (tina yothers)
to steal from SNL; really? that's the best the casting department could do, really? family ties was one of my favorite shows. alex was awesome and mallory was better than bra ads in the sears catalog in terms of occupying the spank bank. even that spazzy cockgrabber skippy was ok. but jennifer sucked, in large part because she was ugly and pudgy. also, they could never figure out what they wanted her to be. sometimes she was the jock, sometimes the smart girl. we all know that girls can't be both in real life. kidding. well not really. usually smart jock girls are hot.
(4) roger thomas from "what's happenin'" (ernest thomas)
now i really liked rog. he was funny and he kept his idiot friends in line. he also put up with a lot of sass from that extortionist sister of his, dee. as an aside, it seemed dee's price for just about everything was a quarter. i know it was the 70s and all, but a quarter? i bet that asking price made her very popular with the boys. if they had taken that angle, it could have been a very different show.
anyway, rog. he was pretty cool but goddamn if he wasn't ugly. what's happenin' was filled with ugly people though, so he didn't stand out like some on this list. shirley was one rough looking broad. you really gotta think that rog's look was a precursor to urkel. i used to love when his big fat mama would squeeze him until he couldn't breathe. great show, albeit ugly.
do you realize that rog is now almost 60 years old? that makes me.......pretty old too.
(5) julie cooper from "one day at a time" (mackenzie phillips)
whew. maybe the ugliest one on this list. i would rather vigorously rub my genitals against a cheese grater than come within 50 yards of this mess. what truly sets her apart from your average ugly person on tv was twofold (a) her voice, which could peel the paint off a wall and sounded like a cross between courtney love and feline rape, and (b) the fact that her character was a thundercunt (stolen from "weeds"). probably ten times an episode (before she got kicked off for being a druggie whore), i used to wish that schneider would smack her in the face with his giant toolbelt and monster set of keys and then throw her body down an elevator shaft. it just didn't fit that barbara was such a nubile little piece of jailbait but yet was genetically the same as....that thing. although, judge for yourself; anne romano wasn't being named to people magazine's 50 most beautiful people either, so maybe it was barbara that was the black sheep, a la marilyn from the munsters. i'm probably going to write about this soon, so i don't want to get into it here, but wasn't schneider fucking cool? that goddamn mustache alone was worth enough pimp points that he should have been aiming way higher than that screechy, melodramatic anne romano.
and oh yeah, mackenzie phillips used to fuck her dad in real life. i guess when you look like her, you have to expand your potential sexual conquests to include immediate family.
(6) screech from "saved by the bell" (dustin diamond):
i almost didn't put him on this list, because his character was supposed to be ugly so they made him goofier and dressed him funny. however, given the actor playing the character, it's not like they could have gone another direction. the dude is fucking funny looking. he has a really high waist and a sunken chest, for openers. his face is odd and offputting too. crazy nose, brillow pad hair, weird chin, just really a disaster. how this dude ended up on TV is a mystery to me. and in addition, he's apparently a real asshole now. you'd think that he'd be humbled after only being able to land reality shows for D listers, but listening to him, it sounds like he thinks he's zack morris. on the show, he had tori spelling as a girlfriend sometimes. even that sleestack-looking bitch was too high for him. i refuse to talk about the sex tape he put out because that would mean thinking about it, and i'd rather think about giving a tongue bath to amy winehouse than entertain the thought of what screech's junk looks like.
(violet bickerstaff)
well that's probably enough of that list. i feel sufficiently dirty. i think i'll go watch olympic women's beach volleyball to get my head right.